Bob Darcy
Contributing Columnist
No wonder they put you on indefinite suspension.”
This quote is from the Aug. 4, 2002 Sunday Oklahoman. The speaker, Tess Tracy, refers to her husband, a police officer. Those were the last words from the “Dick Tracy” comic strip in the Oklahoman. The next day, “Dick Tracy” was replaced with “Hi & Lois.”
Dick Tracy began Oct. 4, 1931, in the Detroit Mirror and first appeared in the Sunday Oklahoman on Feb. 25, 1934. Between 1931 and 2002, “Dick Tracy” achieved enormous popularity.
The first “Dick Tracy” film came out in 1938. Eight others followed. The latest, from 1990, featured Warren Beatty, Madonna, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman and Dick Van Dyke.“Dick Tracy” had various radio shows between 1935 and 1948, and of them, the musical “Dick Tracy in B-Flat,” featured Bing Crosby as Tracy and Bob Hope as the villain, Flathead. In 1995 there was a “Dick Tracy” 32-cent stamp.
“Dick Tracy” had little or no humor. The cops, by and large, were trustworthy and intrepid; the crooks, by and large, were murderous and
flawed. Bullets killed. Crooks died beneath the ice, machines crushed them, they were shot simultaneously through the head and heart or scalded to death. Sometimes the odd good citizen got killed as well.
The strip featured innovations over the years, such as the wrist radio and an atomic laser beam weapon, and eventually got involved with an advanced humanoid moon civilization.
The man responsible for all this was Chester Gould, born in 1900 in Pawnee.
Look through the 1918 and 1919 Redskins (the name of OSU’s defunct yearbook) and you will find Chester Gould’s high-school drawings.
In 1920 the Goulds moved to Stillwater. Gould’s father became editor of the local newspaper, and Chester was an Oklahoma A&M freshman. He’s on page 70 of the 1920 Redskin.
The family home was at 409 S. Lewis St. It’s in a quiet neighborhood a few blocks east of the campus and a few blocks north of downtown — an easy walk either way. I stood on the corner, near the two-story Gould home and tried to experience how it was 87 years ago. Today nothing can be heard. There are no smells. No people move about. Everyone is sealed within homes and cars.
Victor Hugo once wrote that at twilight one is able to experience a city street of an earlier time. In the darkness old sounds returned.
In 1920, windows were open. People were out talking, watching, drinking, eating. Children were running, calling. Cars were noisier then, as were dogs. Families kept chickens. Men and boys worked on car engines. There were smells: human sweat, animals, all sorts of savory cooking, baking, oil, gasoline and the smell of rain.
Wearing glasses and a suit, freshman Chester Gould took it all in, and eventually transformed it into a world of hardworking people, grotesque criminals, phonies, and cops.
Gould joined the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity and maintained ties until his death. I visited the Lambda Chi house on University Avenue. They have a Dick Tracy drawing Gould gave them on a 1970s visit, 50 years after he left. Some Lambda Chis showed me personalized drawings. In a Student Union room there is another Dick Tracy sketch.
But drawing sports cartoons for the Oklahoman was not enough. Gould transferred to Northwestern, near Chicago, and graduated in 1923.
Brooklyn born and bred Al Capone, a year older than Gould, moved to Chicago in 1918, a city with which he is forever identified.
A few years later Gould became part of the same Chicago, where he fictionalized and immortalized its battles between the cops and the Capones.
I stare at that 1920 Redskin photograph. Within the freshman Chester Gould I can see the elderly cartoonist. Same suit, same glasses, same haircut. Each of those Oklahoma A&M faces quietly looked out down their own roads.
This quote is from the Aug. 4, 2002 Sunday Oklahoman. The speaker, Tess Tracy, refers to her husband, a police officer. Those were the last words from the “Dick Tracy” comic strip in the Oklahoman. The next day, “Dick Tracy” was replaced with “Hi & Lois.”
Dick Tracy began Oct. 4, 1931, in the Detroit Mirror and first appeared in the Sunday Oklahoman on Feb. 25, 1934. Between 1931 and 2002, “Dick Tracy” achieved enormous popularity.
The first “Dick Tracy” film came out in 1938. Eight others followed. The latest, from 1990, featured Warren Beatty, Madonna, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman and Dick Van Dyke.“Dick Tracy” had various radio shows between 1935 and 1948, and of them, the musical “Dick Tracy in B-Flat,” featured Bing Crosby as Tracy and Bob Hope as the villain, Flathead. In 1995 there was a “Dick Tracy” 32-cent stamp.
“Dick Tracy” had little or no humor. The cops, by and large, were trustworthy and intrepid; the crooks, by and large, were murderous and
flawed. Bullets killed. Crooks died beneath the ice, machines crushed them, they were shot simultaneously through the head and heart or scalded to death. Sometimes the odd good citizen got killed as well.
The strip featured innovations over the years, such as the wrist radio and an atomic laser beam weapon, and eventually got involved with an advanced humanoid moon civilization.
The man responsible for all this was Chester Gould, born in 1900 in Pawnee.
Look through the 1918 and 1919 Redskins (the name of OSU’s defunct yearbook) and you will find Chester Gould’s high-school drawings.
In 1920 the Goulds moved to Stillwater. Gould’s father became editor of the local newspaper, and Chester was an Oklahoma A&M freshman. He’s on page 70 of the 1920 Redskin.
The family home was at 409 S. Lewis St. It’s in a quiet neighborhood a few blocks east of the campus and a few blocks north of downtown — an easy walk either way. I stood on the corner, near the two-story Gould home and tried to experience how it was 87 years ago. Today nothing can be heard. There are no smells. No people move about. Everyone is sealed within homes and cars.
Victor Hugo once wrote that at twilight one is able to experience a city street of an earlier time. In the darkness old sounds returned.
In 1920, windows were open. People were out talking, watching, drinking, eating. Children were running, calling. Cars were noisier then, as were dogs. Families kept chickens. Men and boys worked on car engines. There were smells: human sweat, animals, all sorts of savory cooking, baking, oil, gasoline and the smell of rain.
Wearing glasses and a suit, freshman Chester Gould took it all in, and eventually transformed it into a world of hardworking people, grotesque criminals, phonies, and cops.
Gould joined the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity and maintained ties until his death. I visited the Lambda Chi house on University Avenue. They have a Dick Tracy drawing Gould gave them on a 1970s visit, 50 years after he left. Some Lambda Chis showed me personalized drawings. In a Student Union room there is another Dick Tracy sketch.
But drawing sports cartoons for the Oklahoman was not enough. Gould transferred to Northwestern, near Chicago, and graduated in 1923.
Brooklyn born and bred Al Capone, a year older than Gould, moved to Chicago in 1918, a city with which he is forever identified.
A few years later Gould became part of the same Chicago, where he fictionalized and immortalized its battles between the cops and the Capones.
I stare at that 1920 Redskin photograph. Within the freshman Chester Gould I can see the elderly cartoonist. Same suit, same glasses, same haircut. Each of those Oklahoma A&M faces quietly looked out down their own roads.
